There has long been a recognized need for electronic systems capable of recognizing speech on a real-time basis with a high degree of accuracy. Much success has been accomplished with such systems, which generally fall into two broad categories. In the first category are speaker-dependent systems, which require that they be "trained" to acquaint them with the voices to be recognized of normally a limited number of speakers. The second category of systems is designed to understand a variety of speakers with varying accents and speech patterns, and without training. In general, systems of the second category, referred to as speaker-independent, have a smaller recognition vocabulary than that available for speaker dependent systems.
Despite major advances, difficulties are still experienced in creating a reliable speech recognition system which can function in both a high and changing noise environment. In particular, there is a need for such systems in environments where background noise, from a variety of sources, may be present and where a real-time analysis and record of speech must be accomplished. Securities transactions, for example, occurring on the trading floor of a stock exchange through orally-issued and executed orders, would be particularly well served by processing and recordation through an electronic speech recognition system. Such a system, capable of discerning the oral buy or sell order of a trader, would provide significant improvements and safeguards over current systems, as it could provide an essentially instantaneous documentation both of the specifics of a trade and the time at which the trade was executed, thus preventing, for example, the manipulation of the claimed time of a trade, resulting in securities fraud and other improprieties.
It is accordingly a purpose of the present invention to provide an integrated electronic voice recognition system capable of high levels of performance in high noise, as well as changing noise, environments.
Another purpose of the present invention is to provide an electronic voice recognition system capable of interconnecting a plurality of voice sources to a centralized processing unit.
Yet another purpose of the present invention is to provide such a voice recognition system which allows for unrestricted movement of the voice sources, and which can provide a confirmation signal to a given voice source upon receipt and successful recognition of the transmitted voice signal.